I Visited the Violia incinerator at Portsmouth  on June 3rd with councillors from the county planning committee (Development Control), council officers and parish councillors from Bramford & Little Blakenham.  It is a very large building some 40 metres high although smaller than the county plans for Gt Blakenham.   Just what would it look like in the Gipping Valley?  A house is 7 metres to the ridge,  In Portsmouth the incinerator is in a large industrial area.

It was an operational plant built several years ago but modern, not a converted old incinerator like the one SITA took us to in Kirklees.  The building was tidy and quite clean. There was no noise or smell outside the building and not a lot inside but they have had problems with some noisy equipment that were solved after commissioning.  There was no sign of traffic problems and no queue to tip waste.

We did not get to the fan cooled condensers that could be a noise problem at Gt Blakenham or at the turbine so the county council’s  noise expert could not take readings

One problem revealed was that on one occasion the plant suffered an inversion layer at low height that grounded the plume from the chimneys within 400 meters.  In Gt Blakenham that would be on housing and the valley area is known for inversion layers.  They were, we are told the issue that forced the high chimney on the cement works.  Long term residents of the area have raised questions on this issue repeatedly and have been told that they should not be worried.  What is the true position?

Pollution measurements were being taken continuously as regulations require and were well below regulatory limits.  Unfortunately the critical pollutants like heavy metals dioxins and furenesare difficult to measure at low concentrations and are only measured every 3 months.  Levels are considered to be OK as long as the combustion temperature is kept above 850 deg Celsius for a set time.  That temperature is monitored continuously.

Overall this plant burnt 205 k tonnes of waste, produced 65 k tonnes of Co2, 44 k tonnes of bottom ash for road building, 5 k tonnes of hazardous pollution control residue (fly ash) and 2 k tonnes of recovered metals. The Co2 is less damaging to the environment than methane from landfill but anaerobic digestion would not emit either.

Overall nothing alarming, better than landfill but still not a good process.